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Faith vs Works: My Week of Living Biblically

Jason Micheli —  May 15, 2013 — 4 Comments

Justified_2010_Intertitle_8064This weekend we continue our series through Romans 3-4, Justified.

Romans 3.21-31 is the text, and, considering the role its played in Christian history, it’s quite possible this is the most important New Testament passage. It’s where Paul picks up his thesis statement from Romans 1.16-17 to display how God’s righteousness (God’s covenant justice, is how NT Wright puts it) is revealed through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. This ‘justifies’ us, Paul says, and we need respond only by faith(fulness) of our own.

Thence the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone- as opposed to ‘works.’

How this passage has been interpreted and continues to be so is problematic in precise ways I don’t have the energy to unpack. Suffice it to say that the whole faith vs works debate neither resembles Paul’s actual authorial aim nor does it fit easily, if at all, into the Gospel’s schema, which seems to have a lot to say about us being judged according to works.

Playing on an old computer recently, I came across this old sermon of mine on Matthew 25. It reflects on this discontinuity between our reading of Paul and the clear reading of Jesus’ teachings.

Matthew 25.31-46  (10/26/08) 

My Week of Living Biblically

So, someone should’ve told Matthew that he had it all wrong. Matthew apparently didn’t get the memo. Clearly he doesn’t know that you and I- we’re saved by grace. Not by our works. Not by our good deeds. Not by our charity.

And if it’s not Matthew’s fault, then someone should’ve set Jesus straight. Someone should’ve told Jesus that Paul says: our salvation is a gift. It’s not something we earn or deserve because we could never do enough to earn or deserve what God has to give.

Someone should’ve sat Jesus down and said: ‘Look, what’s the problem? Paul explains this very clearly. We’re made righteous not by anything we do but by what Christ has done for us. We’re justified not by our works but on the basis of Christ’s work on the Cross.’

Someone should’ve told Jesus: ‘That’s not the way it works. When you come back again in glory, you’re supposed to judge us based not on what we do but based on our faith in you.’

It’s our faith that saves us. Not our works. Not our good deeds. Not our charity. I mean…that’s what makes us Protestants. That’s what I was taught in seminary. That’s what I was tested on before the bishop ordained me.

Except, here’s the rub:

Almost nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus say that you and I will be judged based on our beliefs, our faith. Instead, almost everywhere Jesus’ harsh words of judgment are reserved for those who do not show mercy or love to their neighbors.

     St. Paul says we’re saved by our faith.

     But today Jesus says when it comes to the Kingdom it’s all about what you’ve done for the least of these.

      Okay, which is it?

Faith or works? I mean…how do you reconcile that kind of incongruity? To be honest, I don’t know if I can answer that question. The bible study I help lead on Sunday nights has been confused over this very question for weeks now. I read today’s passage last Sunday evening. I read it over and over and over, and I thought myself into a tangle of theological knots.

And that’s when it hit me: maybe my thinking is the problem. Maybe my problem is trying to understand this passage, trying to square this passage with that passage, trying to reconcile what Jesus says here with what Paul says there. Maybe my problem is trying to approach this scripture with my head when Jesus just wants me to live it.

Maybe my thinking is the problem. Maybe my problem is the way I constantly make my faith about what I believe so that, for me, the life of faith is about getting those beliefs just right. Maybe Jesus teaches what he teaches because he wants me to live it. A novel concept, I know.

     Sunday night a week ago I just asked myself: What would it look like for me to live out this passage in my life? In my day-to-day, ordinary life what would it look like for me to take Jesus’ words seriously?

So, last Sunday night, in the laboratory of my mind, I hatched a little experiment.

I decided that this week I would do what Jesus tells us to do. I decided that if I saw someone who was hungry, I would give them food. If I met someone who was thirsty, I’d give them water. Someone without clothes- I’d give them mine.

No excuses.

No assuming that someone else will do something.

I decided that if I encountered a stranger, I would treat them as if they were Jesus Christ.

That was my experiment- my commitment- this week. It just so happens that this week I also traveled to Kansas City for a young clergy fellowship in which I participate.

The first trial of my experiment came in the food-court at the Charlotte airport. I had a layover and was grabbing some lunch. I went to sit down and, scanning the dining room for a table, I noticed a man all alone, eating his burger and fries in an absent sort of way. He was maybe 70 years old.

Before I say any more, I should tell you, in case you don’t me very well, that I’m a shy person by nature. Typically, I’m reserved, introverted, quiet- I never do what I did.

I took my lunch and my luggage and I walked over to the man’s table, and I said: ‘I noticed you’re eating alone. Would you mind if I sat here and gave you some company?’

He kind of looked at me over the rim of his glasses and then looked around the dining room- probably to see if he was the butt of some practical joke but maybe to point out all the other people who were contentedly eating alone. After a moment, he motioned with his French fry filled fingers for me to sit down. ‘I’m Jason,’ I said. ‘Don,’ he replied.

He took a few bites more and then he asked me: ‘Do you always offer to sit down and eat with strangers?’ At first, I just said ‘No’ but he kept looking at me for more so I said: ‘Look, I was reading the bible last night, the part where Jesus says to welcome strangers, and I made a promise to myself that this week I would just do what Jesus teaches.’

Now, you can say that kind of thing here in church and it’s cool, it sounds reasonable. When you say that to strangers in an airport Burger King, it totally freaks people out.

When Don heard me say that he stiffened, sat up and scooted his chair back a bit. You could tell he was expecting me to hit him up with some kind of Jesus pyramid scheme, and he was ready to say ‘No thanks’ to whatever tract I was about to pull out of my pocket.

     ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I don’t have any agenda. I just want to eat with you.’

‘You’re kind of strange, aren’t you? Do you always go up to strangers talking about Jesus?’

‘No, not ever,’ I said, ‘I’m a minister.’

We talked for a while. He told me he’d never really gone to church, not since he was child. Faith had never been a part of his life.

‘My brother died,’ he said, ‘that’s where I’m going, to his funeral in Ohio.’

For a few minutes more, Don told me about his brother. When Don checked the time on his watch, I asked him. I said: ‘I don’t want to pressure you. You don’t have to say yes, but would it be okay if I prayed with you?’ And he said yes.

My second trial came later that evening. From the airport, I took a taxi to my hotel. The cabdriver’s ID sitting there on the dashboard said that his name was Omar. The cab was still driving slowly over the speed bumps in the arrivals loop of the airport, and I reached my hand over the seat and said: ‘Omar, I’m Jason.’

Eventually, he shook it, but for a while he just stared at my hand like I’d found something that had long been missing in the backseat of his car.

Having learned from my previous conversation with Don, I just decided to come out with it this time.

‘Omar,’ I said, ‘I’m a Christian and this week I’m working on following Jesus better, and I was just wondering if there was something going on in your life that I could be praying for.’

Again, I never talk like this. Even now I cringe when I hear myself say it. I know how lame it makes me sound.

‘Come again?’ Omar asked and turned the volume down on National Public Radio.

     So I went through it all over again. ‘I’m a Christian. I was reading the bible last night and I promised myself that this week I would try to follow Jesus better and I was just wondering if there’s something going on in your life that I could be praying for?’

Omar crinkled his eyebrows and stared at me through his rearview mirror. ‘What’s the catch?’ he asked me. ‘There’s no catch,’ I said.

For several miles he didn’t say anything. The silence was louder than the volume on NPR. But when we got out on the highway he said to me: ‘My wife’s pregnant. We’ve had two miscarriages before. You can pray for that.’

Third trial.

On Tuesday my clergy fellowship visited a hip, bohemian kind of church called Kansas City: Revolution. The church runs a Soup Kitchen in their basement, feeding hundreds of homeless and working poor twice a day. We ate lunch there that day.

After I got through the lunch line I saw that my clergy group- they were all sitting together at a table in one corner of the room. And I saw that opposite them was a table that was empty but for one homeless man. I sat down and ate with him…as much as I didn’t want to.

He was dressed in a patchwork sort of way with sweatpants over jeans over a jogging suit. The View was playing on the TV there in the room, but he was staring intensely at something over it. He was eating his rigatoni like he had a grudge against it, and his whole body seemed coiled in anger or anxiety. I’m sure he had some mental illness that explained all that, but that didn’t make the meal any less awkward for me.

     I laid off the Jesus talk. I just tried to make conversation with him. I asked him his name. I asked about him. I told him my name and about me. I poured him a cup of coffee and offered to get him more food.

Nothing. He didn’t say anything to me. Honestly, it was painful.

When he was finished eating, he got up hurriedly and said: ‘Thanks for the conversation.’

I never got his name.

      Let me be clear. I share this with you all not to impress you with how faithful I am, how saintly I am. I share it with you not to impress you but to confess to you: to confess how normally I don’t do those kinds of things, how too often I treat my faith, my beliefs, my worship- how I treat it all like I’m practicing for a game that I never actually play.

The apostle James, in his letter, points out how even demons believe in God. A faith without acts of mercy and love to others, James says, is not a faith that’s alive. A faith that never gets around to playing the game isn’t really faith.

Just look at Jesus’ parable. Those who are separated out and sent to Hell- they’re not condemned for any bad or wicked things they did. Jesus doesn’t say they kicked a beggar in the street or spit on a lonely stranger or cursed at a homeless person.

     They didn’t do anything bad. They just didn’t do anything.

 

 

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Junk in the Trunk

Jason Micheli —  May 13, 2013 — 4 Comments

Justified_2010_Intertitle_8064Here’s the sermon from this past weekend on Romans 3.9-20.

You can listen to it in the ‘Listen’ widget on the side of the blog.

And also here:

 
 

As many of you know, I do a lot of my work at Starbucks.

I have my reasons.

For one thing, I get more accomplished without Dennis pestering me to show him how his computer works.

But to be honest, the main reason I go to Starbucks…is because I like to eavesdrop. 

It’s true. What ice cream and cheesecake were to the Golden Girls eavesdropping is to me.

At Starbucks I’m like a fly on the wall with a moleskin notebook under his wing.

I’ve been dropping eaves at coffee shops for as long as I’ve been a pastor and, until this week at least, I’ve never been caught.

This week I sat down at a little round table and started to sketch out a funeral sermon.

At the table to my left was a 20-something guy with ear phones in and an iPad out and a man-purse slung across his shoulder.

At the table to my right were two middle-aged women. They had a bible and a couple of Beth Moore books on the table between them. And a copy of the Mt Vernon Gazette.

The first thing I noticed though was their perfume. It was strong I could taste it in my coffee.

Now, in my defense I don’t think I could properly be accused of eavesdropping considering just how loud the two women were talking. Like they wanted to be heard.

Their ‘bible study’ or whatever it had been was apparently over because the woman by the window closed the bible and then commented out loud:

‘I really do need to get a new bible. This one’s worn out completely. 

I’ve just read it so much.’ 

 

Not to be outdone, the woman across from her, parried, saying just as loudly:

‘I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t spend time in the Word every day. 

I don’t know what people do without the Lord.’ 

“They do whatever they want” her friend by the window said.

And I said- to myself- ‘Geez, I’ve sat next to two Flannery O’Connor characters.’

I assumed that since they were actually reading the bible there was no way they attended this church, but just to make sure I gave them a double-take.

 

They had perfectly permed hair flecked with frosted highlights. And they had nails in which I could see the reflection of their large, costume jewelry.

 

“Baptists” I thought to myself.

 

They continued chatting over their lattes as the woman by the window flipped through the Mt Vernon Gazette. She stopped at a page and shook her head in disapproval.

Whether she actually said ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk,’ or I imagined it I can’t be sure.

 

The other woman looked down at the paper and said: ‘Oh, I heard about that. He was only 31.’ 

 

‘Did you hear it was an overdose?’ the woman by the window said like a kid on Christmas morning.

And that’s when I knew who they were gossiping about. I knew because I was sitting next to them writing that young man’s funeral sermon.

‘Did he know the Lord?’ the woman asked.

‘Probably not considering the lifestyle’ the woman by the window said without pause.

 

They went on gossiping from there.

They used words like ‘shameful.’

They did not, I noticed, use words like ‘sad’ or ‘tragic’ or ‘unfortunate.’

 

It wasn’t long before the circumference of their conversation spun its way to encompass things like ‘society and what’s wrong with it,’ how parents need to pray their kids into the straight and narrow, and how this is what happens when our culture turns its back on God.’

 

After a while they came to a lull in their conversation and the woman opposite the window, the one with the gaudy bedazzled cross on her neck, gazed down at the Mt Vernon Gazette and wondered out loud:

‘What do you say at a funeral like that?’ 

 

And without even looking at them, and with a volume that surprised me, I said:

‘The same damn thing that’ll be said at your funeral.’ 

     They didn’t even blush. But they did look at me awkwardly.

‘I hardly think so’ the woman by the window said, sizing me up and not looking very impressed with the sum of what she saw.

And so I laid my cards down: ‘Well, I probably won’t be preaching your funeral, but I will be preaching his.’ 

 

And then I pointed at her theatrically worn bible, the one resting on top of her copy of A Heart Like His by Beth Moore, and I said: ‘If you actually took that seriously you’d shut up right now.’

     “No one is righteous, not one.” 

Sounds a little harsh, right? I mean, no one?

Just try filling in the blank of Paul’s assertion. Think of the best person you can and stick them down inside Paul’s sentence and listen to how it sounds.

     No one is righteous, not one, not even Mother Theresa.

No one is righteous, not one, not even Gandhi.

No one is righteous, not one, not even your Mother. (Happy Mother’s Day)

When you hear today’s scripture text the first time through it sounds like this is Exhibit A for everything people hate about Christianity.

Here’s this God who made us and then made a measuring stick that was just a little bit higher than the best of us and a lot higher than most of us.

But to hear it that way is to miss who Paul is speaking to and where this falls in Paul’s letter.

In case you’re just tuning in, so far Paul has spent chapters 1 and 2 of his letter pointing out everything that’s wrong with the world. Everything that’s broken in God’s creation.

And in chapters 1 and 2, Paul makes his case by pointing his finger at “those people.”

“Them.”

Not the good, every Sunday people at church in Rome but those other people. ‘Society.’ You know, those people? The ‘lost’ people who don’t believe in God, who don’t attend worship, don’t raise their children right.

Those people.

They’re greedy, Paul says. Violent even. They’ve got no morals or values.

‘Just listen to the way they talk’ says Paul, ‘all cursing and slander.’

Those people.

They’re broken the institution of marriage and the family. They just hop from one bed to the next, one mate to another, like people are just a means to an end.

Those people.

They’ve got no commitment. No decency.

Paul spends chapters 1 and 2 pointing at ‘those people’ and ticking off their every sin and flaw.

And you can bet that with each and every indictment, you can imagine as the accusations build, the members at First Church Rome nodded right along with self-satisfied smiles on their faces.

     You can imagine them saying to themselves: ‘That’s right, that’s exactly how those people are. Thank God I’m not like those people.’ 

     And that’s Paul’s rhetorical trap because in chapter 3 he turns his aim at the good People of God, and he says: ‘No one is righteous, not one.’ 

Which is Paul’s way of saying: not even you.

And then Paul hits them, us, with this battering ram of accusations about how we sin every day with our minds and our lips and our hands and feet, by what we do and by what we leave undone.

And Paul lifts those accusations, one by one, word for word, straight out of scripture.

And that’s Paul’s point.

That’s Paul’s point when he says we’re not justified by the law, by scripture.

You see, the takeaway from today’s text isn’t that you’re a perpetual disappointment to God. If that’s what you leave with then you’ve missed what Paul’s doing here.

The takeaway is that belonging to a religious community doesn’t make you any closer to God than anyone else. Believing in the bible doesn’t make you a better person than anyone else because that same bible indicts you too.

     You may go to church every Sunday but the Book of Micah says God hates your praise if there’s a single poor person in the streets.

You may be a good mother and love your kids, but the Book of Mark says if you don’t love Jesus more then…

You may be a clergy person like me, you might’ve given your whole career to God, but the best the Book of Matthew has to say about that is that I’m like a white-washed tomb, a hypocrite with lies on the inside.

Don’t confuse your place in the pews with a place in God’s favor- that’s Paul’s point- because the only advantage this (the bible) gives us is that it tells the truth about us.

Who we really are.

    ‘No one is righteous. Not one.’ 

The woman by the window actually did shut up for a moment, clearly trying to figure out how this had become a 3 person conversation.

And then it hit her: ‘Have you been eavesdropping on us?’ 

‘Of course not,’ I lied.

‘Why don’t you mind your own business’  she scolded.

‘But that’s just it’ I said, ‘it is my business. I’m a preacher and so I couldn’t help but notice that I had two Pharisees sitting next to me.’ 

She narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice: ‘Listen, young man. I’ve been saved. I love the Lord, talk to him and read his Word every day.’ 

‘Apparently you’ve not retained very much’ I mumbled.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked with mustered outrage.

‘It means you’re no better than that guy over there’ and I pointed to a homeless guy who was nursing his coffee and muttering to himself.

‘In fact, you’re not good at all. And neither am I. None of us is in a position to judge anyone else, and someone with a worn out bible should already know that.’ 

I thought that I’d just played a trump card. The end.

‘Well, isn’t that exactly what you’re doing right now? she asked me. And suddenly I felt the tables turning.

‘Uh, what do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Well, it sounds like you’ve been eavesdropping on us for the last 10 minutes and judging us the whole time.” 

I felt myself blush: ‘Not the WHOLE time.’ 

‘I bet you started judging us before you even heard what we were talking about.’

‘I did not’ I lied, ‘Don’t forget you’re talking to a pastor.’ 

And I thought that was the end of it, but then she turned her chairs towards me, like we are all together, and she asked:

     ‘So, what makes you do it? Why are you so quick to stick your nose in other people’s junk and judge them?’ 

I considered punting on her question, telling her I had work to do and leaving it at that.

But she’d caught me eavesdropping so I thought I should balance out my vice with a little virtue.

I told her the truth: ‘Probably because I have junk of my own that I don’t know what to do with.’ 

‘Me too’ she said, and suddenly she dropped her guard like we were fellow addicts at an AA Meeting.

She said: ‘I’m constantly carrying around things I’m not proud of, things I’m ashamed of, things I try to keep locked and hidden away, because I don’t know what to do with them.’  

 

And then her friend, the one opposite the window, sipped her coffee and then said: ‘Me three.’ 

I’ve been a pastor long enough to know that if you’d been sitting there you too would’ve said..

Me four.

Because it’s true of all of us.

We condemn and we criticize and we label and we gossip and we judge.

We raise an eyebrow at other people’s mistakes, other people’s sins, other people’s problems- because we’re carrying around our own junk and we don’t know what to do with it.

 

But Paul shows us what to do with our junk.

Paul shows us what to do with the worst secrets about ourselves that we carry around with us.

     You can’t forget that when Paul directs his attack in chapter 3 at religious people, the first person Paul has in mind is Paul.

     You can’t forget that when Paul levels the accusation that ‘No one is righteous, not one’ Paul’s speaking in the first person before he’s speaking about any other person.

Paul cursed and condemned Christians. Paul’s encouraged executions and stood by smiling while Christians were stoned to death.

Paul’s the one whose throat was an open grave.

Paul’s the one who used his tongue to deceive and had venom on his lips.

Paul’s the one whose mouth was full of bitterness, whose feet were swift to shed blood.

Paul’s the one who knew not the way of peace…until he met the Resurrected Christ.

And after he meets the Risen Christ, Paul is free to own up to all of it.

All the junk he would otherwise want to hide and deny and push down and repress and keep locked and hidden away.

Paul shows us what we can do with our junk.

Paul shows us that if we’re more convinced of God’s grace than the sin we’re convinced we must keep secret from everyone, then we can open up this junk we carry around with us and we can say:

‘No one is righteous, no one, especially not me. 

     Look at what I’ve done. 

     This is who I was. 

     These are the words I spoke in anger that can never be taken back

     This is the relationship I pretended was fine until it unraveled away. 

     These are the kids I took for granted until they were grown and gone. 

     This is the person I see in the every mirror every day and have never learned to love. 

    This is the addiction I always insisted didn’t have the better of me. 

     This is the insecurity that masks itself as cynicism. 

     These are all the people I refused to forgive. 

     This is the person closest to me I cheated on…

     But God…God forgives…all of it.’ 

     Paul shows us that our worst junk can become a living, breathing example

of what God’s amazing grace can do.

Which is kind of a shame.

Because I’ve been a pastor long enough to know that most of you pretend you’re not so desperate as to need a grace that’s anywhere near amazing.

Most of you pretend you’re not actually carting this junk around and have no idea what to do with it.

For many of you, church is the last place where you’re really you, and Sunday morning is the time of the week you’re the least open about who you really are.

Church is where you grin and pretend like it’s all good and you’ve got your ______together.

Many of you have come to church for years so determined to not let anyone find out what’s in here (junk in the trunk) that you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ in here (your heart).

And that’s a shame.

Because Paul shows us- the things we’re most burdened by are the things the world most needs to hear.

Paul shows us that if we open this up and admit that no one is righteous, not even me…and here I’ll give you a ‘for instance’

Paul shows us that if we can say that then what someone else can hear is: ‘If God’s grace is for them…then it’s even for me…’    

 

     Yesterday afternoon nearly 500 gathered to celebrate that young man’s funeral.

We sang Amazing Grace.

We heard a reading from Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. It was different words but the same meaning. And I preached, the Gospel.

The same message I’d preach at any of your deaths.

After the funeral, I was walking past the receiving line, which started here at the altar and snaked its way to the other end of the building, and one of the deceased’s friends grabbed my elbow and said to me: ‘If what you said is true for him, then it’s true for me too…right?’ 

     And I said: ‘Yeah.’ 

    And he let go of my elbow and said, ‘Thanks for sharing that.’ 

 

 

     

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What is a Christian?

Jason Micheli —  May 12, 2013 — 2 Comments

faith4This week and next we’re in chapter 3 of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, a pivotal section for Paul’s argument and a money chunk of the letter when it comes to notions of what does and does not constitute a legitimate follower of Christ. 

“I’m not that interested in Christianity. I am interested in worshipping the God that raised Jesus from the dead, having first raised Israel from Egypt.”

Too often, people miss the painstaking connections Paul makes- the continuity- between the faith of Israel and the faith of Jesus.

Stanley Hauerwas, #3 on my man-crush list, doesn’t make that mistake. He has this concise, thoughtful and spot-on synopsis of ‘What is a Christian.’

It’s well-worth the few minute view. Consider it a preview for next week’s sermon.

Click here to see it.

 

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Does Your Guilty Conscience Disprove Total Depravity?

Jason Micheli —  May 9, 2013 — Leave a comment

1101480308_400This week we continue our sermon series through Romans by taking a look at Romans 3.9-20, a passage with an important place in Protestant history.

Paul’s insistence in 3.9 that ‘no one is righteous, not one,’ a phrase that hearkens back to Genesis 18 and the story of Sodom, has been the cornerstone of the Calvinist doctrine of ‘Total Depravity.’ It’s the ‘T’ in Tulip acrostic of Calvinist theology.

Total Depravity holds that because we’re all under the power of sin every act and aspect of our lives is compromised by sin.

Even are good deeds are ‘like filthy rags’ because ultimately they’re motivated not by a desire to serve God or neighbor but to justify our own selves.

I’ve never been able to swallow total depravity hook, line and sinker. It’s always struck me as a doctrinal answer in search of a theological problem- a problem I don’t necessarily agree Paul was primarily addressing.

The notion of total depravity made me remember this quote from Reinhold Niebuhr, a liberal theologian from the 20th century and one I’m not normally given to quoting in any positive way (save the title of this blog):

“Man loves himself inordinately. Since his determinate existence does not deserve the devotion lavished upon it, it is obviously necessary to practice some deception in order to justify such excessive devotion.  While such deception is constantly directed against competing wills,seeking to secure their acceptance and validation of the self’s too generous opinion of itself, its primary purpose is to deceive, not others, but the self. 

The self must at any rate deceive itself first.  Its deception of others is partly an effort to convince itself against itself. 

The fact that this necessity exists is an important indication of the vestige of truth which abides with the self in all its confusion and which it must placate before it can act. 

The dishonesty of man is thus an interesting refutation of the doctrine of man’s total depravity.”

Niebuhr’s point is that our self-deception itself presupposes that somewhere deep down within us we know that we’re not living out who we were created to be and that we disobey God.  Even if this is only on the subconscious level it undermines the notion that we’re completely depraved in the Calvinist sense. It also suggests, contra Calvinism, that non-Christians as creatures of God still live their lives imbued with the grace of the imago dei.

Our guilty conscience, then, might be the best sign we have for hope.

 

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Christian Wiman, Will Willimon and Saving the Snark for Another Day

Jason Micheli —  April 30, 2013 — 1 Comment

Christian-Wiman-200x200Peter, I like to imagine, was a preacher after my own heart- and not just because of the ample baggage he carried with him into the pulpit.

I’ve always loved- relied upon- the full-throated, ballsy way Peter begins his Pentecost sermon:

“You people of Israel, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth, you people used those outside the law to nail him and kill him. But raised him from the dead.” 

And when you stop to recall that Jesus’ tomb was only a stone’s throw away from Peter’s listeners, you realize it’s one hell of a way to begin a sermon.

You had him killed. He was buried right over there. God raised him from the dead. He’s not there anymore. 

And when you stop to consider that any one of Peter’s listeners at any moment could’ve gotten up from Peter’s preaching and simply walked over to Jesus’ still fresh tomb to see for themselves whether or not this preacher was a liar, you quickly realize that Peter’s preaching in no way allows for any vague, spiritualized notion of resurrection.

Similarly, I’ve always leaned on the way Paul defends the resurrection not by way of scripture or philosophy but by ticking off all the names of the people encountered by the Risen Christ. Over 500 of them. Including, last of all, Paul himself.

Paul won’t coddle any pablum that tries to water down this defiant declaration of resurrection to a limp existential feeling that ‘Christ is with us still.’

Of course that limp, reductive, hesitant, existential feeling (love is stronger-fingers crossed-than death) is precisely what many of us call ‘Easter.’

RELIGION_680X382Take, for example, this exchange cum confession from the conclusion of the article I posted last week from Texas Monthly about the poet Christian Wiman:

“When asked if he believes that the son of God, the Word made flesh, was actually crucified and placed in a tomb only to rise again after three earthbound days, Wiman glances up at the ceiling of the perfectly quiet conference room in the stylish offices he will soon vacate. His eyes close behind his rectangular glasses. It’s probably unfair to ask a poet and a conflicted Christian, a man who writes carefully and slowly and wonderfully, to opine off the cuff about a topic so weighty. He does believe it, he says, though not in the same way he believes in evolution or in the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. It is a different sort of belief, a deeper kind of truth. Finally, he finds the words: “I try to live toward it.”

Okay, so this isn’t as limp and lifeless a profession as, say, ‘Jesus is still alive in our hearts’ but it’s still nowhere in the neighborhood of Peter’s clear-eyed profession:

You had him killed. He was buried right over there. God raised him from the dead.  

I bring this up because a reader of the blog asked if I would respond to Wiman’s appraisal of the resurrection.

‘Isn’t it just Bultmannian pablum?’ I think was the exact question.

And to bait me even further, the questioner compared me, in sarcastic tone and depth of substance, to Bishop Will Willimon.

Nice.

To return the flattery with a kindness of my own, I wanted very much to drag Christian Wiman through the rhetorical mud. I wanted to stuff Wiman with straw and then knock him over with heavy-handed prose.

But, truth be told, I can’t bring myself to do it.

As much I don’t want the Willimon comparison to slip away, I can’t write Wiman’s comments off as ‘pablum.’

And not just because I admire Wiman’s poetry.

I can’t because Wiman has cancer. Will always have cancer. Near certain death has intruded upon his life at several junctures. Tumors in his blood have welled up to push and stretch at his skin. Pain has at times crippled him.

Wiman, therefore, is someone who’s carried a burden I only know from a distance, which makes him someone who would know very well how empty are our culture’s spiritual cliches.

He’s also someone, I imagine, whose own likely shortened life has prompted him to wrestle earnestly with what Peter and Paul have to say about life after death.

And so I’ll have to save the snark for another day. Christian Wiman’s words may not be Christian enough for me.

They may not bear too close a resemblance to Peter’s words, but I’m wiling to grant that they are nevertheless words hewn on faith.

 

 

 

 

 

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Jesus, Our Brother

Jason Micheli —  April 27, 2013 — 1 Comment

moltmannWe continue our sermon series through Paul’s Letter to the Romans this weekend. While Paul’s dominant theme in the letter is that of Christ as ‘the Righteous One,’ the messiah who offers the faithful obedience to Yahweh that had been Israel’s calling. Christ’s faithfulness in Israel’s stead points out a necessary complimentary theme for Paul. Because Israel had not given God the faithfulness God was due, and thus had not been ‘a light to the nations,’ judgment was now due Israel just as it was to the other nations.

Christ the ‘Righteous One’ is also the Christ the vicarious sufferer.

This resonates with a passage from Jurgen Moltmann’s autobiography, A Broad Place, which I recently finished reading.

steve-larkinFor those of you not familiar with him, Moltmann is not only Steve Larkin’s doppelganger Moltmann is one of the most significant theologians of the 20th century.

As a young man, Moltmann served in the Nazi army. He did so near the end of the war when both sides were nearing desperation and taking desperate measures. Only after the war did Moltmann learn of his country’s shameful crimes with which he had, unwittingly, abetted.

Paradoxically, Moltmann also credits this experience with his conversion to Christianity.  Having been taken captive, Moltmann was sent to POW camp run by Scottish Christians. In the camp, Moltmann was given a bible, which he began reading in the evenings ‘without much understanding,’ Moltmann confesses. That is, until he came across the psalms of lament, Psalm 39 in particular:

“I am dumb and must eat up my suffering within myself.

My life is as nothing before thee.

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry.

Hold not thou thy peace at my tears,

for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.’

Reading those words was for Moltmann like ‘an echo from my own soul, and it called that soul back to God.’

And reading Mark’s Gospel in which Christ’s last words are ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Moltmann came to see the assailed, forsaken Christ as our ‘brother in suffering.’ Moltmann goes on (in a very Wesleyan way, I’d add):

“I have never decided for Christ once and for all, as is often demanded of us. I have decided again and again…’

As he concludes the chapters on his time in the prison camp, Moltmann makes the powerful observation that the Christian faith of their captors was the only thing that enabled his fellow prisoners to become ‘human again:’ by treating the German prisoners as ‘brothers in Christ,’ exposing them to the truth of their country’s sins without condemning them as less than human and by offering, in Christ’s name, forgiveness.

Likewise, Moltmann says, his captors- many of whom had been victims of Nazi terror- let it be known that ‘in Christ’ was the only ground upon which they could ever possibly forgive.

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You Might Be A Soterian If…

Jason Micheli —  April 25, 2013 — 4 Comments

544900_608245191477_257197599_nThis week we continue our sermon series through Paul’s Letter to the Romans. It’s a tricky letter to expound because many assume that Paul’s primary message is justification by faith alone- how we’re made right in God’s eyes not by anything we do but only by faith.

As NT Wright says, thinking Paul’s main message is justification by faith alone is to confuse key for melody, for Paul’s main message isn’t how we’re justified but how God has raised Jesus from the dead and made him Lord of all creation.

The trouble is many Christians not only think justification by faith is Paul’s primary message; they think justification by faith is the Gospel.

Scot McKnight cleverly calls these Christians ‘soterians’ after the theological jargon that emphasizes Jesus’ saving work.

Scot had this post recently, outlining how you know whether or not you have a soterian Gospel- vs Paul’s actual Gospel.

The soterian gospel is a rhetorical bundle of lines about the doctrine of salvation that came to the fore in the 20th Century. I had lunch recently with a missionary who told me he’s been struggling with the “soterian” gospel for years and is so glad I wrote The King Jesus Gospel because it put into words what he’s been thinking for more than three decades. He’s not the first to tell me this.

Critique of that rhetorical bundle can be found from a number of quarters, including the new Calvinists, theologians, pastors and leaders, and also from some evangelists I’ve met.

Perhaps the secret to the success of the soterian gospel is its teachability and its programmability. Whatever the reasons for its successes, we are not alone in being convinced it is not a fair representation of the NT gospel. I got a chuckle from this reflection by  Lee Wyatt:

What would you add? What do you think is the fundamental Question the soterian gospel asks? What do you think is the fundamental Question the gospel of Jesus and the apostles asks?

You might have a Soterian Gospel if:

-you think of humans primarily as sinners in need of redemption (which we, of course, are) rather than divine image-bearers in primarily in need of restoration to their primal dignity and vocation of God’s royal representatives in the world and creation’s wise overseers;

-you think Christ became human only because humans sinned and needed redemption;

-you think that the forgiveness of sins is the end/goal of God’s redemptive work;

-you think human destiny will be in a not-earth place (heaven) and in a not-earth kind of existence (immaterial, so-called “spiritual”)

-you think the earth is not a part of God’s eternal plan.

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Boston and the Righteousness of/from God

Jason Micheli —  April 19, 2013 — 2 Comments

family-vacations-boston-marathonThis weekend we continue our sermon series through Paul’s Letter to the Romans. As I mentioned in my sermon last Sunday, Paul’s entire letter is an extended meditation on the key phrase in 1.17: ‘the righteousness of/from God.’

In the Greek, it translates to ‘dikaiosyne theou.’

Dikaiosyne theou is the fork in the Romans road.

Depending on which path the reader chooses, Dikaiosyne theou can lead you to two very different conclusions.

If you translate ‘the righteousness of/from God’ as a genitive objective, then you conclude, as Martin Luther did, that Paul means God’s righteousness gets transferred to us from God by our faith in Christ.

When you choose this fork in the Romans road, then it appears that Paul’s primary question is about our justification before God. The plot of Paul’s letter becomes our own individual savedness.

It’s about us. Our destiny. Our rescue from sin.

If you choose the other fork in the Romans road and translate ‘the righteousness of God’ as a Genitive subjective, then you must conclude that Paul’s writing not about us, primarily or individually.

He’s writing about God. ‘God’s own righteousness’ in this sense refers to God’s commitment to the covenant made with Abraham, in which God promised to rescue- not individuals but- the world from sin.

To choose the former option, NT Wright says, is a bit like the earth insisting that the sun revolves around it.

To choose the latter option is to acknowledge that we’re just a part of God’s creative and redemptive activity.

Like Israel before us, we’re participants in God’s saving work. Of course, this also necessarily entails our individual redemption from sin, but, like Israel before us, we’re not saved for our own sake. 544900_608245191477_257197599_n

God’s promise was made through the chosen people, Israel, but the promise was never limited to them. 

The promise was always: for the world.

Abraham being chosen by God was a blessing, to be sure, but it was always a blessing meant to bless the whole world, that through Abraham’s People God would undo what Adam did. Through Abraham’s People, God would deal with sin, set the world to rights, and restore his creation.

Ever since Martin Luther, Protestants have opted for the former reading of 1.17, reading into Paul a narrow focus on the eternal salvation of individual souls.

Ever since Luther chose that fork in the road, many Christians have believed Paul’s message was about the life to come rather than this life.

Christianity, we think, is about going to heaven when you die instead of joining God in bringing heaven to earth. luther

Unpacking ‘dikaiosyne theou’ isn’t simply an academic exercise.

It’s not just a parsing of theological jargon.

And it’s not nearly as abstract as it sounds.

Events like the Boston bombing bear that out.

How?

Because Paul intends ‘the righteousness of God’ as the answer to Habakkuk’s question: Why God? How long will you let this go on God? Where are you God? (1.17)

Events like the Boston bombing remind us that Habakkuk’s question is our question too.

And Paul’s answer to that question isn’t: ‘Don’t worry. You’re saved, things will be better when you get to heaven.’

Paul’s answer to the question is the righteousness of God.

Paul’s answer is that precisely what grieves us grieves God too, that what drives us to despair, drives God to determination, that what prompts us to ask pained questions is what compels God to cut a covenant.

Paul’s answer to Habbakuk’s our questions is that in Jesus Christ we see unveiled God’s commitment to his promise to restore creation from the sin that ails it.

Paul’s answer is not to point to where we’ll go when we die if we have faith.

Paul’s answer is to point to God’s promised coming, to God’s faithfulness to us, and, by our faithfulness, foreshadow his arrival; so that, we become- in some small way- the answer to such questions.

 

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Jesus I Have Loved, But Paul…?

Jason Micheli —  April 15, 2013 — 6 Comments

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This weekend the copier ate my sermon right before our Saturday Night service, forcing me to rely on the Holy Spirit (aka: winging it). I couldn’t find it on my computer afterwards either, forcing me to wing it again on Sunday. Apparently, it was auto saved to iCloud. So, the sermon you see below is not the sermon I gave.

You can listen to the actual delivered sermon here, in the iTunes Library under Tamed Cynic or in the Listen widget on this blog. The audio isn’t great because I recorded it on my phone and I was ranging all over the sanctuary while I talked. Sorry. 

I can only conclude that by not being able to preach the manuscript you have here, God didn’t think it worth preaching. It’s not a ‘good’ sermon. Too dense, too historical- there’s simply too much I want to say to reform people’s notions of Paul and sermon clarity suffers for it. Homiletical vomit, you could call it. 

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A couple of years ago I took the Tennleytown train to the National Cathedral for a workshop on preaching. I enrolled in the workshop not because I have any room for improvement (obviously) but because the workshop was being led by Fleming Rutledge, the famed Episcopal preacher.

If you read my blog then you’ve heard me confess this before: that I am susceptible to crushes on older women.

It’s true. Faye Dunaway. Rene Russo. My 8th Grade English teacher, Ms Brock. And at the top of that list, right up there with Mary Tyler Moore, is Fleming Rutledge. photo-fleming_rutledge

If you don’t know her, Fleming Rutledge has an aristocratic old Virginia accent. She has a Downton Abbey dignity tempered with a twist of Southern irreverence. She likes to wear an old fashioned Geneva collar.

She preaches with sophistication and wit. She loves the theology of Karl Barth, the literature of Cormac McCarthy and the films of Joel and Ethan Coen and she wears her hair in a bun. She is, in other words, the perfect woman.

I mean…. other than my wife.

And so I took the Tennleytown train to the Cathedral not because my preaching needed improvement. Instead, like a teenage boy convinced the swimsuit model is looking right at him from the pages of the magazine, I took the Tennleytown train to be in the presence of my idol.

When I first met her my heart skipped a beat.

When she nodded approvingly as I introduced myself as being from Virginia, I felt flush.

And my infatuation was forever cemented when she began the workshop just as I would’ve begun it: by criticizing her own denomination.

She said that rather than announcing the Gospel, most Episcopal priests preached about Jesus as a compassionate, human teacher. Judging by the collars in the room, I was the only one who wasn’t an Episcopal priest.

     To make her point, she asked the dozen of us in the workshop how many of us had ever preached from Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

And the only hand that went up was mine.

And Fleming Rutledge smiled at me. And like an awkward Mr Darcy I smiled back.

And Fleming Rutledge asked why I thought Romans was important.

And because I pore over each new Fleming Rutledge book as though it were a Victoria’s Secret catalog, I knew exactly what to say. I knew exactly what she’d say.

     “Because the Gospels are narratives. Story. Their meaning isn’t self-evident. It’s Paul’s Letter to the Romans that spells out our message.’ 

      And Fleming Rutledge beamed at me, as though she were about to say: ‘you had me at Pauline Soteriology.’ 

     And I beamed back, thinking to myself: ‘Score.’ 

Then Fleming Rutledge turned to the others, the reprobates in the class, and she asked them to share ‘Rev Micheli’s high estimation of Romans.’

The responses trickled up from around the room:

‘Because Paul complicated Jesus’ simple message of love.’

‘Because Romans is difficult to understand.’

‘Because Romans comes with baggage on social issues.’

Finally, a middle-aged priest with a gray beard said: ‘I went into ministry because I love Jesus, but Paul…? his voice dribbled off to a question mark.

Fleming Rutledge looked at him, her eyebrows crinkled in distress.

So, like a prince rescuing his damsel, I interjected:

‘It doesn’t sound like you all have ever heard Paul’s BIG MESSAGE.’

And sure, I wasn’t trying to be profound or insightful. I was just trying to mack on my muse.

But it worked.

     ‘Jason’s right,’ Fleming Rutledge said- I was ‘Jason’ now- ‘I’m afraid you haven’t heard Paul’s BIG MESSAGE’ she said in her Gone with the Wind accent.

     ‘And if you haven’t heard Paul’s BIG MESSAGE’ she added, ‘you will never have a Gospel that’s big enough.’

 

Some of think you’ve heard it before. Paul’s big message in Romans.

     But what you’ve actually heard is St Augustine. What you’ve heard is what St Augustine heard in Paul.

Augustine was born 3 centuries after Paul. Augustine grew up an unbeliever in North Africa. He was brilliant and popular. Everything came easy to him. Everything except self-control.

Augustine was what we’d call a ‘horn-dog.’images

Beginning in his adolescence and continuing even after his conversion to Christianity, Augustine battled lust and sexual temptation. He once famously prayed: ‘Lord, give me chastity, but not yet.’

Augustine wrote in his memoir that he was at war within himself. He could never bring himself to live as he knew he should as a Christian.

Then one day Augustine was sitting in a garden, weeping in despair, and he heard a boy in a neighboring yard say: ‘Pick up and read.’

And in a mystical moment, Augustine picked up a New Testament and flipped, at random, to a page and read it. It was Romans 13: ‘Let us live honorably… not in debauchery…Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.’

     Augustine thought he’d discovered in Paul someone just like himself, someone who constantly did exactly what he willed he would not do. 

     And so what Augustine heard in Paul’s Letter to the Romans was that the Law- who God wants us to be and how God wants us to behave- always leads to frustration and failure because you and I are sinners. 

     Sin’s been passed down to us from our original parents, Adam and Eve. 

     So any hope we have of eternal salvation cannot rely on us. 

     And that was the Gospel for Augustine- that salvation isn’t ours to earn by our virtue. Salvation comes to us from God’s grace. 

     Alone.  

Some of you think you’ve heard Paul’s big message before, but you heard is actually what St Augustine heard in Paul.

And you know what? Augustine’s Gospel isn’t big enough.

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     Some of you think you know Paul’s big picture thesis, but what you’ve actually heard is Martin Luther. What Martin Luther heard in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. luther

Luther lived a 1,000 years after St Augustine and 1500 years after Paul. Martin Luther was a Catholic monk, an Augustinian monk.

And despite being a monk, despite having given his life to God, Martin Luther was terrified of God.

Martin Luther was convinced that, no matter what he did, his devotion to God was never enough to avoid God’s punishment.

He was so plagued by a guilty conscience that he even grew to hate the God.

He became preoccupied with one question: How can I get a gracious God?

And he searched scripture for an answer.

And then one day Martin Luther happened across Paul’s Letter to the Romans: ‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel…For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith…’ 

 

     And what Luther thought he discovered in Paul  was someone just like himself someone who was struggling with how they could ever stand before a God who is holy and righteous. 

    And what Luther heard Paul saying is that because of our sin we have no righteousness of our own. Instead because of Christ’s sacrifice for our sin God ‘imputes’ Christ’s righteousness to us. 

     And that became the Gospel for Luther: Christ’s righteousness gets credited as our own and it’s available to us not by anything we need to do but by faith. 

     Alone. 

Some of you have heard that before, and you assumed it was Paul’s big message. But actually what you heard is what Martin Luther heard.

And you know what? Luther’s Gospel- it isn’t big enough.

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     Some of you think you don’t like Paul’s big message, but it’s not because you actually heard Paul. It’s because what you heard is what John Calvin heard in Paul.

Calvin was born 600 years ago, a long time after Paul. Calvin was born in France and grew up to be a lawyer. 220px-John_Calvin_2

When Calvin was just a boy his mother died. After she died, Calvin’s father, who was not a kind man, sent him away to live with another family.

When Calvin was a man, his only child died in infancy. And then his wife died, after only 9 years of marriage.

From childhood to adulthood, Calvin’s life was marked by sorrow.

Because he was a lawyer, trained in logic and argument, Calvin wanted to know answers to the big questions. He wanted to know Why.

Why, if God is all-powerful do mothers die? Why children and wives die? Why do bad things happen? And, come to think of it, why do so many people not love the God who made them?

Calvin turned to scripture for answers to his questions, to Paul’s Letter to the Romans, chapter 8:

“We know that all things work together for goodfor those who love God…For those whom God foreknew he also predestined… ’

    And when Calvin read that he discovered in Paul someone with the same questions as himself, at least that’s what Calvin assumed. 

     And so what Calvin heard Paul saying in Romans was a message to persevere in the face of sorrow, that God has a plan for each and every life, that from the beginning of the world, God has chosen to save some eternally through Jesus Christ but also to damn others eternally. 

    And for Calvin that became the Gospel: that God is absolutely sovereign over our lives. 

But as big as that sounds, it’s not nearly big enough.

  Here’s the problem:

Paul’s Letter to the Romans is actually one, long sustained argument.

It has one single thesis.

     It’s like a symphony, made up of motifs and movements and variations that all come together to contribute to one single expression. 

     And because Romans is like a symphony, whenever you focus on just one part of Romans, the composer’s message gets jumbled and distorted. 

     Augustine and Luther and Calvin and there are plenty others- they focus on just 1 small motif in Paul. 

     And as a consequence, they make their Gospel too small.

Because Paul’s not writing about how we’re saved by grace or how Christ’s righteousness gets credited as our own by faith. And he’s not interested in God’s plan for my life.

Even if those things are all true, Paul’s not writing about us.

He’s writing about God. 544900_608245191477_257197599_n

And the dramatic tension in his writing, the question searching for a resolution, is this:

Has God given up on his promise to Abraham? 

Remember, all the way back in the beginning of the bible, in the Book of Genesis, the way God decided to deal with the Adam problem was through Abraham.

The way God decided to deal with the sin in the world was by calling and swearing a covenant with Abraham.

God called Abraham to live in faithfulness to God and by doing so he would be a like a beacon of light that would call others back to faithfulness and obedience to God.

And eventually God promised that through Abraham would come a world-wide family of God’s People, a Jewish and Gentile family that would be the first fruit of God’s new, restored creation.

God promised that to Abraham.

And God promised to be faithful to that promise.

     Fast Forward:

The Jews of Paul’s day saw that promise as up in the air.

     They worried that God had broken his end of the promise because Israel had so often broken their end of it. That’s the dramatic tension in Paul’s composition to the Romans. That’s the question he wants to resolve in his symphony.

And like any good symphony, Paul gives you a clue to the resolution in the opening theme.

You heard it read today. Verse 17- that’s Paul’s thesis statement.

That’s his answer to the question, that’s the opening theme to the symphony of Romans and everything else is just a variation on it.

‘For in it…’ Paul says, ‘in the Gospel, in the announcement that Jesus, the crucified Messiah, has been made, through the resurrection, the Lord of creation’ (1.3-4).

     ‘In the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed…’ 

The righteousness of God- God’s righteousness- is a very specific, technical term in the Hebrew Bible.

The word ‘righteousness’ in Greek means ‘justice’ or ‘justification’ or ‘setting things to right.’ 

And in the Hebrew Bible it refers specifically to God’s covenantal fidelity: God’s faithfulness to his promise to Abraham.

You see what’s so big and powerful about the Gospel for Paul is that it isn’t about how we make ourselves right in God’s eyes.

What’s so big and powerful about the Gospel for Paul is that the Gospel isn’t about us at all.

Before Romans is about our justification by faith it’s about God justifying himself. It’s about God proving himself to us.

It’s the announcement that, in Jesus’ death and resurrection, God is keeping his word to Abraham, that in Jesus Christ God has kept his promise to deal with the sin of the world, he’s kept his promise to reconcile what’s wrong in God’s world and he’s kept his promise to create a world-wide people of God who are the sign of God’s restored creation.

And this is unveiled, Paul says, ‘through faith for faith,’ which actually your bibles do a terrible job translating because in the Greek its:

‘from faithfulness through faithfulness.’ 

As in God’s righteousness is unveiled from God’s faithfulness- from Yahweh not forgetting his promise to his people.

And it’s unveiled through faithfulness- through Jesus doing what Israel could not do, showing an Abraham-like trust in God even unto death.

And then Paul concludes his opening theme with a few notes from the prophet Habakkuk:

‘the one who is righteous by faith will live…’ 

But again, this is Jewish music he’s writing. He’s not talking about us.

He’s reminding us that God had promised this all along, promised that he would make good on his promise to Abraham, promised that he would send a Messiah, a Righteous One, who would live a life of perfect faithfulness and whom God would vindicate in death by raising him up to life.

 

And all of that would be the overture of God’s new creation.

When you step back and listen from beginning to end, that’s the music Paul wants you to hear.

On Good Friday, I got a message that someone close to me, someone I care about and love, had been committed.

For threatening to commit suicide.

And so just a couple weeks ago, I found myself riding that same train to Tennleytown I had ridden a couple years ago. This time to go not to the Cathedral but to a psychiatric institute to visit.

Just because I’m a pastor doesn’t mean I know what to do in those situations when those situations hit close to home.

 

Just because I’m a pastor- it doesn’t mean I don’t get overwhelmed with the same questions you do:

Why did this have to happen God?

Where the Hell are you God?

How are we going to get through this God?

What in the world am I supposed to say?

And maybe it’s because the last time I’d ridden that train to Tennleytown I’d been talking about Paul and Romans with Fleming Rutledge, but riding on that train, thinking of who I was going to see, Fleming’s point hit me again:

that if we don’t grasp Paul’s BIG PICTURE then the usual ways we define we the Gospel aren’t Big Enough.

They’re not BIG ENOUGH for someone whose life is upside down and completely out of sorts.

I mean-

It may be true that we’re saved by God’s grace alone not by our own virtue. It may be true but- take it from me- that’s not a Gospel BIG ENOUGH to take to someone in despair.

It may be true that what makes us right with God, what justifies us before God, isn’t anything we do but is our faith alone. That may be true, but you shouldn’t have to take it from me to know that that’s not a BIG ENOUGH Gospel for someone who is crippled by fear.

It may be true that an all-knowing God has a plan for each one of us and every moment of our lives, but I hope you know- I hope you know- that that is in no way a BIG ENOUGH Gospel to offer someone who’s in agony, someone who’s convinced there’s no way out, someone who’s convinced there’s nothing they can do, someone who’s convinced there’s no one there for them.

The only Gospel BIG ENOUGH is the one Paul gives us here in 1.16-17: that what we discover revealed in Jesus Christ is that God never forgets us, never abandons us, that no matter how dark our life seems God doesn’t turn his back on us, doesn’t break his word to us.

God keeps his promise to be with us.

Always.

That’s a Gospel BIG ENOUGH to fit all our other gospels inside. 

 

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Get Over Yourself

Jason Micheli —  April 8, 2013 — 2 Comments

r1-not-ashames* Title courtesy of Dennis Perry.

For the many of you who aren’t part of my church, this is a sermon from Julie Pfister, our Congregational Care Director, who leaves for Utah after this week. Prayers and best wishes to her. Take a few moments to read her sermon; it’s well worth it. 

Romans 1.1-7

Just so you know, I did not ask to preach today and I’m not here because I am special or different from any of you.  I was told that my story and my voice are important, because I’m a Christian

And that God uses broken people like me.

Although Bible study is my favorite part of the week, what I know about scripture could fit on the tip of a pin.

I guess if a Bible scholar is who they thought you should hear this weekend, they would not have asked me.

So, why did I agree to preach this weekend?  Believe me, I have asked myself that question a thousand times over the last few weeks.

Well, I just couldn’t help myself.

Scripture tells me that I am a servant of God – that I am His witness.

I have worshipped with many of you here over the years, but just in case you don’t know me, Im Julie Pfister.  I have been married for 27 years to my husband Steve and have raised three children here in Alexandria, just around the corner.  I have been blessed to work in the church as a teacher in the Day School…. with the babies.  And for the last year and a half, I have served as the Congregational Care Coordinator.

Many of you may know that I am moving in the not too distant future.

My husband must love me very much to have agreed to go to a no-stop light town in South Central Utah to take care of my ailing parents.   It will be a long awkward good-bye as our plans change often depending on the latest updates about my father’s health and treatment plan.  Although Utah is home for me, we have built a life here in this community.    I couldn’t leave Aldersgate for any other reason.

I begged Dennis and Jason:

“please please please….just let me just go quietly into the good night.  Let me hitch up my covered wagon and leave at dawn and head west.”

I pleaded….”It’s going to be too difficult to leave and say good bye to everyone.   I will end up crying like a zillion times. “

Jason said he wanted you to hear my voice.

It’s not what I wanted.

Then, Dennis, in his infinite compassion and understanding, said

“Get over yourself.  

We are going to cry and pray for you at a great party.  Get ready!”  

So I said yes.

Get over yourself.”

At its very core, isn’t that what knowing Christ is all about? -

Getting over ourselves and becoming a new creation in Christ.

Casting all fears, burdens, doubts, insecurities, hopes and prayers on HIM.

“As God tells the prophet Isaiah, “You are MY witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.  Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me. 

How could I say no, knowing that scripture tells me that I am to witness for Christ?

For the Apostle Paul, everything changed on the road to Damascus. Saul, as he is known before his conversion, encounters the Risen Lord in a flash of light. He is knocked from his horse and blinded.  Jesus asks him why he persecutes Him.  He is told where to find a man named Annanias through whom God would restore his sight.  Annanias tells him that God has chosen him to spread the good news of the Gospel to the Gentiles

He doesn’t shrug the whole thing off.

Sure, he was blind, and then he could see, but he doesn’t write it off and wonder “

What just happened here?”

That couldn’t have really been God?

There are plenty of people throughout scripture that tried to shrug off attention getters like that.

And we see it around us all the time – unwillingness to see the hand of God in our lives, even when His grace and mercy are as tangible as being knocked off a horse and blinded.

 

But there are also dozens of examples in scriptures of unsuspecting characters who accept God’s call, even when they were not seeking it.  God sought them.

Noah wasn’t looking for an excuse to build an ark.  Moses asked the LORD over and over to not make him go before Pharoah.  David wasn’t tending his sheep thinking….hum….I think I want to be King.

There are many who believe that if God had not chosen Paul to take the Gospel to the Gentiles, and if Paul had not obeyed, that there would have been no worldwide Christian faith.  Most importantly to remember it was not Paul by himself.  It was as he said repeatedly, “not I, but Christ in me.”

So Saul becomes Paul, a new creation in Christ and is horrified to think that his old name Saul of Tarsis would dishonor God and freak out those who would hear him preach about Christ.

Paul doesn’t ask for this to happen.  He isn’t praying for a testimony of the risen Christ.  He doesn’t choose this role.  He is busy persecuting those who are spreading the Good News of Christ.

But once God chooses him, He does not turn back.

Unlike Paul, I was already blind.

Blind from fear, mistrust, disillusionment.  Blind from bitterness that led to the realization that by striving every day to live a good life, to do the best I could, that my life was not going to be the perfect little picture I had painted for myself and my family.

For me, everything changed one morning.

It wasn’t a conversion in the sense that I did not know Christ as my Savior before that morning.  It was just that I was living on the fringes, powerless and afraid that my life would always fall short of being what and who God created me to be.

He just knocked me off my horse and told me that He would change my life.  That He is who He says He is.

It was a moment of pure grace and mercy that is at the heart of everything I have felt, and believed, and loved since.

It was an ordinary morning during a moment when I was sitting in a chair and was told to get up and change my life.   I did.

I have never looked back.  I have faltered and experienced doubt, frustration, fear, panic and all the other emotions that are in our range, but I have never, denied or diminished how God changed me and continues to work in me and through me.

 

So, what happens when everything changes for you?

You wake up in the morning and start the day as it is required and planned.

Get the kids off to school.  Get ready for work.  Start a load of laundry. Make a few calls.

What happens when all that just stops and GOD touches you in a way that brings you to your knees?

Do you just shrug it off?

How do you fit a new creation – a transformed life, into a life already in progress.

What happens when you pray and pray and pray that God will show his face?

And then HE does.

Once we claim Him.  He claims us.

Paul got over himself quickly, but it wasn’t without cost.

Can you imagine what courage it must have taken for him to seek out Peter and the other apostles to tell them that Christ had appeared to and spoken to him?

Returning to those whom he had persecuted-, even leading to the death of the beloved Apostle Stephen?

Asking to become one of them and to have their blessing to take the Gospel and bring it to the gentiles.

That kind of courage only comes with faith.  

The meat of today’s scripture is verses 5-6

“Through Him and for His namesake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.  And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ”  

It is about obedience through faith.

Not Paul’s obedience and faith – but ours.

Paul is following Jesus example of obedience through faith.

That’s why for Paul there is really no difference between faith and obedience because having faith means obeying God’s ways all the way to a cross.

Rebellion is much more fashionable than obedience these days.   

We think it brings freedom.

Freedom from rules.

Freedom from oppression.

Freedom from THE MAN.

rutledgeFleming Rutledge says:

“true freedom is not found in rebellion against God.  Rebellion against God leads to the death of the soul and the spirit.  Obedience to God may mean the death of the body, but it means life for the world.”  How do we carry around in our bodies the death of Jesus?”

This church, these pews have been my trenches.

 

Many times when the church was quiet, I stormed through the doors, determined to not see anyone along the way, marching straight to the bottom of this gigantic cross.

That was the size of the cross I needed some times.

A giant cross to heal me and calm me from my fears.

To put me back together again.

In these pews and at the foot of that cross I fought for my family, for my children, for my friends, my sanity.

If I could have, I would have gone to the caves where David hid from Saul and cried to the LORD – How long, O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?

This is where I prayed my family together against great odds.

This is where I prayed that God would find a remnant in my heart “to take root below and bear fruit above.”  That my family would be a “band of survivors.” And that the “zeal of the Lord almighty would accomplish this.”

The sign in front of the church asks – Does your faith fit your life?

Over the years, some people have gone so far as to tell me that I spend too much time here – –I venture to say that there are many of you out there that are even more of a church rat than I am.

I have been told that I should just get a bed and live here….

That I should “get a life.  That I need to balance – yadda yadda.

This is where I got my life back.

This is where Christ became my savior and I became His.

This is where I serve the One who gave my life and my family back to me.

This is where I found my balance.

How could I NOT be here and spend myself for His church and His people?

 

My prayer has been each morning that God will show me the means to increase my faith, to know and believe that He is who He says He is.

I must listen for the answer to that prayer and recognize opportunities that arise each day to that end.

For the great majority of us, obedience through faith is lived day to day in the humdrum details – being prepared for the daily decisions that show us to be Christians as we claim.

 

The power in obedience – aligning ourselves with the power of God in obedience to the Spirit:  this is the power that overcomes the world.  The power that helps us “get over ourselves”

Paul calls himself a servant of Christ.

Paul was a willing servant and slave for Christ.

He was so overwhelmed at how he had been transformed, that he spent himself to express that.

A bond slave of Christ in debt to all.

Paul is the one who told us later in Romans that …

”the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  

We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to God’s will.  

I have been on the floor at the foot of that very cross, face down, my arms spread – in the shape of the cross….with a prayer in the deepest corners of my heart that I could not give words to.  I confessed to God that I had NO IDEA how to pray.

I used Paul’s word’s that told me that the

Holy Spirit would intercede and moan to the Father on my behalf.

I didn’t just know this, I learned this with my Aldersgate sisters as we have worked our way through a dozen Bible studies over the years.  Relying on each other to help us through many storms.

I, like John Wesley, had my heart strangely warmed at Aldersgate.

My time spent here with you is sacred to me.  Whether you knew it or not, you have been my scaffolding.  As I prepare to leave, a part of Aldersgate, goes with me.  It was here that I found God, or more precisely that God found me.  It was here that a loving, caring congregation accepted me into your midst.  I shall be forever grateful.  And I know that you will do the same for anyone that walks through these doors in search of a place and a people to find and worship God.

I’ll use the words of Fleming Rutledge again to close.  “

The purpose and meaning of worship with fellow believers is to be a people prepared for daily decisions that make our faith fit our life.

As we share the Lord’s Supper together, we rejoice to remember whose spirit it is that bears us up and links us together in the power of the obedience of faith – the faith that overcomes the world.

I offer this in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen

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